Anyway, Congress and the next president will be cutting education funding to meet GOP and, now, Democratic Party me-too demands to reduce the deficit. States and cities also will cut education (as well as social services) because their revenues will decline as they continue in a bidding war to grant tax breaks or outright cash bribes to any corporation promising a job.

As a result, the US risks becoming like a banana republic, with a rich, educated elite and poor, uneducated masses, though with a higher cost of living than in the underdeveloped world. As in a banana republic, an outsized military will continue to eat up government revenues that could have helped civilians.

And now, with Citizens United freeing the corporations from any restraint in their monetized political "speech," the movement toward Absolute Plutocracy, with both Democratic and Republican politicians looking out for the rich, appears assured.

Sure, as commentator Robert Reich recently wrote, Republicans always outdo Democrats in serving the financial powers, but no recent administration "has done more for business and Wall Street than Obama's."

If the Democrats won't lead us out of the plutocratic wilderness, who will?

Third parties have little chance, Faux says, because, in part, of the structure of the American political system — this from a man whom this reviewer once heard plan the creation of a new national party with environmentalist Barry Commoner in a booth in a Greek restaurant in Augusta, Maine.

Commoner, who died a few weeks ago, became the 1980 Citizens Party presidential candidate. Faux, who lived in Maine at the time, co-chaired the committee that organized that short-lived party.

In 2012, a direr situation exists than in 1980, when Ronald Reagan was elected. After all, we've now endured 32 years of the free-market, trickle-down Age of Reagan. "All avenues of escape from a substantial decline in middle-class living standards are blocked," Faux writes.

"So, is it hopeless?" Faux himself asks.

The book's last four pages attempt to pick the reader up from the floor. Faux suggests a constitutional amendment to deprive corporations of Supreme-Court-ordained personhood and guarantee the public's ability to restrict campaign funding.

The outspent Democrats like this idea. In an interview on the website Reddit, Obama said, "We need to seriously consider mobilizing a constitutional amendment process to overturn Citizens United (assuming the Supreme Court doesn't revisit it)." The president is an odd bedfellow for Faux, but Faux observes in his book that Democratic politicians turn populist come election-time.

It's brutally difficult to enact a constitutional amendment. Faux told me in an interview that such an initiative would be a good progressive mobilizing strategy even if it didn't succeed. Obama agrees: "Even if the amendment process falls short, it can shine a spotlight on the super-PAC phenomenon and help apply pressure for change."

In any case, if change is to come, Faux said in the interview, it will probably be led by "the over-educated unemployed" (here are shades of the Arab Spring). With the celebrated American upward mobility now history, these folks "will see class for what it is."

Review: Arbitrage Enough of all this whining about the millions of regular people ruined by the financial collapse of 2007 — how about a movie sympathizing with one of the unfortunate guys responsible?

Rich and richer Last week, Mitt Romney announced a running mate — finally offering relief to the fidgeting comedians, though disappointing them when it turned out not to be Michele Bachmann — and it was 42-year-old Paul Ryan.

Funeral recession These days, practically nothing is immune to the economy's woes — not even an industry that caters to what would seem to be the one recession-proof commodity: death.

Surviving the econopocalypse If you're like the more than nine percent of Americans currently unemployed, your "Yes We Can!" has lately lost some of its gusto. You've hit up everyone you know for work, including your mom, your ex, and your ex's ex.

Trying times for Obama It was only a matter of time before President Barack Obama turned into a deficit hawk. But it is a measure of the desperation sparked by Scott Brown's election to Ted Kennedy's old Senate seat that Obama hatched before the conclusion of the 2010 congressional elections and unveiled a spending freeze.

A church remakes itself in the face of hunger On a bitterly cold morning not long ago, Jerry Viou pulled into the parking lot at Open Table of Christ and a woman popped out from behind a dumpster and shouted, "Do you have food?''

Get smart There are lots of theories about what's wrong with Maine's economy.

Hearts of glass In Ali Shaw’s debut novel, death by glass becomes a star-crossed love story in the vein of a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale — a tragedy that strips away its isolated characters’ fears and defenses and reveals their bravery.

Play ball! Red Sox fans are well versed in the creation myths of the team’s Dominican stars.

Stockholm syndrome With its low crime rate and socialized everything, Sweden doesn’t seem very noirish compared with, say, LA. Then again, much of the country spends the entire winter without sunlight.

SUBVERSIVE SUMMER | June 18, 2014 Prisons, pot festivals, and Orgonon: Here are some different views of summertime Maine — seen through my personal political lens.

LEFT-RIGHT CONVERGENCE - REALLY? | June 06, 2014 “Unstoppable: A Gathering on Left-Right Convergence,” sponsored by consumer advocate Ralph Nader, featured 26 prominent liberal and conservative leaders discussing issues on which they shared positions. One was the minimum wage.

STATE OF POLARIZATION | April 30, 2014 As the campaign season begins, leading the charge on one side is a rural- and northern-Maine-based Trickle-Down Tea Party governor who sees government’s chief role as helping the rich (which he says indirectly helps working people), while he vetoes every bill in sight directly helping the poor and the struggling middle class, including Medicaid expansion, the issue that most occupied the Legislature this year and last.

MICHAEL JAMES SENT BACK TO PRISON | April 16, 2014 The hearing’s topic was whether James’s “antisocial personality disorder” was enough of a mental disease to keep him from being sent to prison.